As a DCMS/ Jerwood Creative Bursary recipient I was invited to attend another networking event to allow all recipients to get together to learn and exchange experience.
The event featured interesting talks by Gaby Styles, Head of Development at the Royal Court Theatre and Anne Torreggiani, Director of Audiences London, as well as an ‘open space’ session and a tour of the wonderful TERRA exhibition (well worth seeing!), and of course glorious food! All hosted at Jerwood Space .
All recipients work in different areas and roles within the art sector which enriched our discussions and provided plenty food for thought. Some of the topics covered were:
- Are the arts only sustainable in bigger cities? We asked ourselves: ‘What can we do to allow the arts to spread across the nation’ (this is of course a very ambiguous question). One answer was to work for example on integrating the arts into the community and educational sectors to allow a better understanding of what the arts can offer.
- How can we, as people working within the arts sector stay connected as a group and as practitioners? We looked at different network forums online and then looked at options available to meet, discuss and share information – something we felt was crucial as communication is very much online based at present.
- What is sustainable? Looking at how the arts sector can be developed to become sustainable both in their existence and how they can support areas of environmental sustainability. Again looking at art being integrated into education as well as giving awareness to our environment as seen, for example in the TERRA exhibition.
As I said, all quite ambiguous questions but important ones to discuss and there were some marvellous, inspiring and sustainable thoughts!
The TERRA exhibition was incredibly inspiring on its own as it tapped into all senses and the sculptures gave a sense of brilliant crafting, creativity and technology/science within every piece. The attention put to every detail within the composition of each sculpture came through the images, textures, smells and sounds they were creating- and it was indeed very difficult to not touch them as I wanted to understand their construction, but as I was in a gallery I had to keep my hands in my pockets…