Failure as an Independent Artist:

The struggle of trying to make work as an independent artist feels really real at the minute. The logical part of me knows that most of the fear is wrapped up in having only worked in the austerity years and a lack of human interaction.

However, the louder part of me worries about all of it: capacity; articulating ideas that were made for bodies; expectations outweighing resource; transactional relationships; unclear strategies; pace and if I’m honest, knowing I’ve been making for ten years so may be old news.

More than ever I don’t believe that moving forward will be possible in anyway unless the performing arts industry slows down and invests in honesty, empathy, healing, redistribution and long term thinking.

I don’t believe I’m entitled to work in the arts. If my work is poor, I would understand and leave but still lobby for change on behalf of the artists working. What is most frustrating is never being in a position to really measure the quality of the work you aspire to make.

The endless cycle of talking about the work, writing applications, reporting, having to convince people if your value and then worrying about having spoken out of turn decentres the work, decentres the communities that gather around the work and leaves no room to be an artist.

Publicly funded art is under resourced. So, do we want to give a little to a lot of people or substantially fund fewer people? Who gets what and why? That’s the real question and it feels as if it would be a lot healthier to ask it than keep dodging it, leaving artists in limbo.