It is strange when your routine suddenly gets turned on its head isn't it? I say this because in the last 2 weeks or so, my regular routine has been completely turned on its head. Before I go on, I would like to apologise for lack of blogging activity in the last 2 weeks, I was very ill last week and was in bed most of the week and last Saturday I went home for a few days. It had been pre planned for a few weeks but it was a lovely excuse to get home and get some rest (and lots of lovely home cooked food!). Even though I felt very bad that I wasn't doing any work or doing anything constructive (except for watching the entire second series of Reggie Perin on Iplayer...) It was definitely the right thing to do in hindsight, because working on my own there is no point in pushing myself necessarily and not making sure I am 100% fully fit because it will only make myself worse in the long term.
Like every where else in the Country, Lancaster has been hit by snow!! its lovely to see some snow in Lancaster and the canal which runs by house has been completely frozen over (of course the fact it is near my house makes it the most important thing in the entire universe!)
The nice thing that the last 2 weeks or so have taught me is that being flexible as an individual is very important. Prior to this year I would have taken far to much on and thought I was Superman and that I could do everything. The last few months have made me realise that I can't do everything and that being able to be flexible and respond to things, one situation at a time and not think everything is one big box of stress but a collection of smaller things that be managed one step at a time!. Even though its hard sometimes being able to see what could be a future risk is something else I have been able to see much more clearly. In previous years I would of really let things get to me and really stress me out badly, in tern not eating properly or sleeping properly. However I feel easier nowadays because I have been able to plan and be organised enough to try and limit the risks, not entirely rule out that things aren't going to crop up and surprise me, because that happens every single day, but I have begun to try and limit the risk of serious stress. This is really really important to me because I have been there and its not very nice at all, not just for me but people who are close to me!.
Another element I feel I am learning at the moment is the art of taking criticism. I have no problem in admitting I am a perfectionist, I like to have everything perfect that I do. However in recent years It has struck me that this idea of making things perfect, however honourable is sometimes very nasty in upholding. Mainly because sometimes I forget what is important, say If I am doing several things at once I would forget what is important or what thing should require the most attention due to its importance. Over the last few months I have begun to change my outlook and focus my energies on focusing on a single project at a time and trying to make it the best I can possibly make it. A nice example of the change in my approach was last Friday during a seminar for PROCAP we were all invited to begin the initial stages of writing our Arts Council Grants For The Arts application and read them out to everyone. The first was trying to write in under 50 words what it was we were trying to get funding for. The main criticism of mine was that it was not clear enough what I was doing. In the second section we were asked to elaborate further on our practice and what we were planning to do with our funding. Again the main criticism was that people still didn't know what I was planning to do. Now a few months ago I would of taken this criticism very personally and wasted my energy on thinking that I was bad at what I was doing. Instead I re wrote my pitch during my lunch break before a one to one meeting with Matt Fenton to discuss my pitch. It was very explicit in what I was planning and what I wanted to do. It just showed to me that I am able to respond to criticism more productively than I have done before. No one likes taking criticism, especially working solo however I see it as a very productive exercise because it allows for a discussion of my practice to take place and gives me feedback, sometimes things that I had not anticipated would come out.
Up until the Christmas break I have a couple of different projects that I am working on. The first one will be taking place 2 weeks today (Friday 17th December) and it is a business pitch to a panel of experts. It will be a 15 minute presentation based on my Grants For The Arts Application which is being assessed. Currently I am working on the budget, marketing strategy and funding partners. I will report back next week on progress, I am aiming to do a first try out early next week to see where I am. Secondly I am doing a 5,000 word essay on the need for Theatrical institutions in my opinion to be digitally innovative in the way they communicate with their audiences, there has been a lot of research undertaken very recently by Arts Council England, Arts & Business and NESTA on this subject and in my opinion it is the most important area of discussion in the arts sector. In the age of huge cuts, Arts organisations need to be innovative in their ways of communicating with their audiences and not rely on old models of communication. I am currently trying to set up 3 interviews with 3 different organisations to try and get a much clearer image of the sector at the moment and how Theatrical institutions are preparing and adapting to the changes posed by social media in particular. I am planning interviews with Jamie at LIVE@LICA, Taylor at Folly in Lancaster and at the Corn Exchange in Newbury where I did 3 weeks of work experience last year.
Whilst doing research a couple of weeks ago I found an exceptional website called IDEAS TAP which is a really exciting development and a really interesting network of people are emerging. Its a website for creatives between 14 and 26 of any and every discipline, I'm trying to tell everyone about this website because it is a really exciting website to be part of.
The website link is: http://www.ideastap.com/
My profile is: http://www.ideastap.com/people/marcuslilley
Next Tuesday I have a meeting with Charlotte Stuart to discuss a business idea I have been developing in conjunction with the 'Go Creative' Workshops I have been attending since October. I'm really excited to be working on something which is my own and I am currently working a very rough business plan for my venture and this is my on going project for the next few months.
The one show I've seen recently was 'Zero Point' the 3rd year Modern Experimental module performance at Lancaster University, which I did last year. Overall aesthetically the show was certainly very impressive with its mixture of film, live performance, graphic novel and animations. Only having a 2 week creative period was certainly a triumph, however narratively it was a bit of a mixture with no real clear direction of where it was going or how the different worlds were linked. Its not a personal critique, just from an audience point of view, it was easy to be drawn in by the technical aesthetics but in reality it is the story which hooks us. The main reason why I enjoyed it hugely was the first 5 minutes or so because the technical aesthetics and the narrative were working really well in setting up the fact it was set on a train, yet you didn't know where it was going, but you knew something was going wrong on the train.
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