My Interview with Mark Wilden from Musicinoxford.co.uk

Have a listen here:

http://www.musicinoxford.co.uk/2010/08/02/musicinoxford-co-uk-podcast-2-august-2010/

Yak It

Here are some pictures I took over the past few Yak’s:

YAK – a bright eyed beast in the face of an unsuspecting world.

As we sped coughing and spluttering into our opening we were met with enthusiasm and a great deal of buzz.

We already have people wanting to come back and bring art. I can’t wait to carry on developing this!

Loving it.

Live art
Live music.
Wall art.

Space for young people to showcase and get involved.

Next week – marketing week. If anyone can help us to get flyers out and media interest then please please get in contact.

on yaking, and other such activities…

Last week, we had a session on ‘Making it Work: self employment in the arts’ with Juliet Brain, and it really I feel saw me turn a corner, and crystalised how much we have done and the potential of what we could do, both as individual artists and as a team. The beauty of the day was it was a real warts and all session about what life as a freelancer is like, from someone who has all the experience we could have wished for; and we were all made to really look at ourselves in terms of strengths and weaknesses, which is never an easy thing to do.. but it was amazing by the end how much it made me think and the confidence it inspired. We looked t what we already knew about ourselves – I knew my basic confidence lay in my ability as an artists and as an organiser, and my driving passion was equal for creating art and for providing other people with platforms and opportunities for their work as well as bringing this creativity for the public; but Juliet also asked us to write all our qualifications and experience on post it notes and stick them on the wall – the rainbow splurge that emerged made us realise that together we have a lot to offer! After a confidence boost, we explored the slightly more daunting side of arts as buissness – ie branding and copy write issues (arrrgh!), issues around child protection and partnership working (arrrrrrgh!) and tax (arrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh!), which made our brains hurt but I think really instilled in us a determination that we could and would get on top of these things and get them right in the future, backed up by all the skills that we realised we had in our tool box which really had been enhanced and added to by all we have done with the Young Leaders Programme so far. We also looked at the links that are out there for artists, big organisations like the Society of British Designers and the English National Youth Arts Network, and descovered all the advice and support they can give which took some of the mystery out of such massive networks and turned them instead into useful tools to navigate. I think overall this was the key note of today, it really was so much about empowering us to take on board all of what we could utilise to help us get where we want to go, and recognise what we have already to back us up!

Talking of putting  our skills to work, on Friday we went to go and see the first space in which the YAK SHACK will be opening, as part of the Fusion project i Cowley based in an empty shop in the Temple Cowley shoping centre in Oxford. It is not going to be empty any more! We are going to be upstairs for the last three Saturdays in June, and each of us are going to be doing  music, visual art, poetry and graffiti based things involving and including young local artists and showing people what we are about! More details to follow, but I am so excited; planning is all well and good and obviously necessary but there is NOTHING like actually getting active, creative and stuck in! ….

…….

Instead of writing something I thought I would do a painting. Fairly random as most of my ideas are!

YAK Shak is certainly heading in the right direction!!

ink and water colours. 21x25cm

chatterboxing turns to action plans!

As I said last time, I have been working on painting last week – above is the draft of the painting I am working on at the moment, a visualisation of the song ‘Velvet’ by The Big Pink… it has changed a lot in transfer from paper to canvas, check out my elliespace blog soon to see the results: http://ellie360@blogspot.com

I have been putting quite a lot out there at the moment including thoughts and drafts as well as finished pieces.. I think there is strong argument for artists to be open and inclusive about their artistic process, especially if they are looking for collaberation, and I feel keen to unravel things to connect people to my work, all part of the idea that art should be open to response rather than inaccessible – I would really love to know what other artists think about this …

Speaking of what other artists think, we met with Tara from Fusion (www.fusion-arts.org) Director of Oxford’s Community Arts Centre, who told us about where her practice has taken her (from running puppet workshops all around Newcastle to being arts director for an entire city in Pheonix, a pretty amazing journey!) and chatted to us about our YAK SHACK project.  Fusion are also launching a project in an empty shop, aiming to explore and celebrate the rich history of Cowley and the people that live there; it sounds like a perfect opportunity to explore also the connection between art and self expression and identity, such fundamental things in life and things that are obviously central to young people and their way of thinking… it all links back to previous thoughts on how to get young people involved in heritage. I have my thinking cap on, I would really like to be involved in some way …

On the subject of young people’s way of thinking, we have a really clear vision now of what we know want to do with our YAK SHACK venture, to provide a platform for young visual artists and musicians who are crying out for places to exhibit and perform. The shop itself will act as a centre for exhibition and performance, and we (Zarah, James, Becca and I) will as a collective explore how we can facilitate workshops to encourage young people who need to confidence to take their work and talent to the next level, and encourage in turn the development of an artistic community led by young people, for young people. In a way, rather than saying young people should be given access to the arts, I would say young people should be given a chance to reclaim their art for themselves ….

artist at work…

We are having a conflab about our YAK Shack shop project – high excitement! – on Friday, so more new on that front then; in the meantime, I am really focusing on my practice this week, producing and exploring some new work, and getting ready for the Odyssey at the Oxford Playhouse next week (I am the production designer, so I am gearing up to spend some busy days in the workshop!) You can follow what I am doing on my blog page:

http://ellie360.blogspot.com

Let me know what you think!

And in the meantime, in the climate of election, some questions for young people!….