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Creative Spaces: ‘So You Wanna Go to Art School?’

By Jodie Barnacle-Best

With the creative industries growing at four times the rate of the UK average1, it is perhaps a surprise that the age-old tropes of art school haven’t yet disappeared. For many students, the decision of whether or not to go to art school is a nuanced debate – one which undoubtedly isn’t given enough airtime at schools or colleges across the country.

The concept of ‘art school’ and what actually goes on there is still seen as pretty mysterious and aloof (all art students will know the struggle of trying to explain how your degree requires significant work, time and skill just like any other degree). And as the stereotypes build and build it is easy to forget how reliant we all are on the arts and what your individual future in the arts could look like… like can you make money or are we all doomed to the ‘struggling artist’ trope forever?

But even once we are over the hurdles debating the mere importance of the arts industries and the potential for growth within an arts related job, there is still a question as to whether art school is the way to go about achieving these ambitions. Do you a need a fashion degree to be a designer? Or a degree in painting to be a painter? And what does a degree in fine art actually mean? 

The impact of the arts is constantly minimised (anyone still remember Fatima the ballerina ‘whO’s NExT JOb cOulD BE iN CyBer’?)2. What is often overlooked is the transferable skills which you accumulate as you hone your craft within your degree.

Hopefully, you will get to become a magnificent painter following a degree in painting and printmaking. But also, you’ll learn creative problem solving, verbal and visual communication methods, responding to briefs and deadlines, emotional resilience, collaborative working… the list is endless!

With art school in particular, it is arguably not the end result of the degree which makes the choice ‘worth it’ – but the art school method of thinking it can instil in you, the acquiring of potential contacts, the widening network of opportunities and access to facilities that is developed during an art student’s academic career.

The chance to be immersed with like-minded people and having the time and space to fully concentrate on learning your craft (or even finding your craft) is one of the many great allures of art school. The permission to experiment, and the safety to fail, while working on projects for the sake of projects (and, for the most part, not commission or money) is an opportunity that’s not frequently available outside of an art school setting. But that doesn’t mean it’s the only way to go!

One of the many beauties of the arts is that there’s not one path for everyone. We all find ourselves clambering around, finding our way, losing our way, or deciding to set up camp halfway down the path for a while because we just like the view.

Ultimately… to art school or not to art school? You decide. But hearing about other people’s creative pathways and understanding the paths available will always be a good starting point. 

Join in and continue this discussion at our first event of the ‘So You Wanna Go to Art School?’ programme! Book a place at our panel discussion happening on Thursday 2nd September 7-9pm at The Stove, Dumfries or tune into the livestream via our YouTube channel:

Sign up – https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/so-you-wanna-go-to-art-school-panel-discussion-tickets-165255719305 

Livestream on YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJbT8JrUhg0pf3UaH0N4sFg

1 Creative Industries Federation, 2019 report ‘Public Investment, Public Gain: How public investment in the arts generates economic value across the creative industries and beyond’, https://www.creativeindustriesfederation.com/publications/public-investment-public-gain, via Culture Counts Scotland

2 Brit Dawson, ‘A brief explainer of the government’s dystopian Fatima cyber ad’, https://www.dazeddigital.com/politics/article/50747/1/a-brief-explainer-on-the-government-dystopian-fatima-cyber-ad

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Musings

Door Handles of Change

By Sam Gonçalves, Digital Producer for Soap Box

Sam Gonçalves

Back in March I started a short term freelance contract with The Stove Network to help them set up Soap Box: a series of events, panels and workshops. The programme, alongside a whole host of extra resources, has now been brought together in an easy-to-use toolkit. 

The team asked me to write about my experience, but I have to admit the last few months have felt very different to the professional experiences I’m used to having. To give you some context, I have never met any of The Stove’s team in person! This whole journey I’ve just been working with disembodied heads on varying zoom calls. It wouldn’t take too much evidence to convince me none of them are actually real.

That was the biggest hurdle, in my opinion, to the development of Soap Box. An excellent programme focusing on the development of digital skills, ran entirely online and designed by a remote team. Suddenly all the strategies you learned to galvanise a team, work with people, create bonds and make together are not quite as applicable to an entirely digital world. 

I arrived at The Stove aware of the ‘newness’ of this challenge and interested on how it would be faced. As time went by, it was a pleasure to see how the team did it: with open minds and a keen sense of curiosity.

The remote nature of the programme was seen as an opportunity rather than a barrier. I don’t think a single one of our weekly meetings went by without a member of the team asking, “Who can we bring in?” about any given part of the project. Collaboration was an essential building block and it involved people in all sorts of career stages, of different ages, backgrounds and perspectives. 

When faced with the fresh challenges arising out of lockdown, I saw The Stove team open up to other experiences and expertise. They sought answers, as oppose to assuming they already had them. As a result, the programme hosted an incredible variety of people – from facilitators to attendees – who brought in knowledge that would not have been there if these events had been run in a business-as-usual way.

Here’s a humiliating metaphor I can use to explain this – Portuguese is my first language and when I moved to Scotland from Brazil at the age of 17, I discovered a cruel linguistic twist. The word ‘pull’ translates to ‘puxe’ in Portuguese, which sounds exactly like the word ‘push’. For years I’d read the work ‘push’ on a shop door and my brain would short-circuit and make me pull it. I’ve walked into my fair share of doors. 

I tarnish my otherwise flawless reputation to say – sometimes the main barrier is being unable accept a piece of knowledge is no longer relevant. What I really take away from the handful of months working with and observing The Stove is their unrelenting drive to learn more, bringing people in who will show them a new perspective and respecting what they have to say – whether they may be the head of an organisation or a young freelancer. 

I long to see the skill of un-learning being used in the creative and cultural sector more often, it would open many doors…

Sam Gonçalves // @SidlingBears

Want to learn more about Soap Box and check out the digital resource toolkit? Visit our webpage:
https://thestove.org/soap-box/

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Musings

The Tortured Artist

By Jenna Macrory, Creative Producer of Creative Spaces

The stereotype of the tortured artist is ingrained in Western culture. With this trope remaining so pervasive for such a length of time the archetype of the tortured artist has adapted with society over time. With the societal perception of mental illness changing, how has the relationship between creativity and suffering progressed over time?

Historically, mental illness and creativity have always been closely associated. In ancient Greece, madness was perceived as a state of other-worldliness. Madness to the Greeks could be interpreted in two ways: divine or demonic.* Demonic madness was seen as bad and therefore perceived in a negative light similar to how mental health is often stigmatised today.

Conversely, divine madness is a spiritual pursuit that permits an individual to act out with conventional societal standards. For the ancient Greeks, creativity was derived from this subversion of social norms. In other words, creativity comes from madness, albeit a specific type of madness but for numerous centuries creativity and madness have remained intertwined.

Few things have remained as prominent through human history as the trope of the tortured artist. Spanning centuries and infecting every single medium of art, prominent creatives appear to use suffering to their advantage.

Author Sylvia Plath channelled her depression into her only novel The Bell Jar; Louis Wain’s paintings of anthropomorphic cats transformed into psychedelic subjects upon his descent into schizophrenia; Kurt Cobain publicly professed his battles with mental health through many of his songs. The list of creatives battling with mental illness goes on but this alludes to a link between creativity and mental health particularly considering that this trope has remained over centuries.

As such a culturally pervasive topic, recent decades have seen the rise of studies investigating mental health in creatives. Despite the empirical evidence of a link between creativity and mental disorders, several studies have exhibited little to no link between the two.

Creative professions proved no more likely to suffer from psychiatric disorders according to a study involving 1.2 million Swedish citizens.** Contrarily studies that do exhibit higher rates of mental disorders show only a marginal difference.*** With the link between creativity and mental illness seeming arbitrary, why has the archetype of the tortured artist remained?

Although creativity itself does not correlate with mental wellbeing, many artists find themselves in conditions that allow psychiatric disorders to manifest. A passion to create leads many artists into situations that can be mentally straining such as low-paying career paths, job instability, or substance abuse.

This sentiment is reinforced by figures suggesting that as many as 60 percent of workers in creative industries spoke of having suicidal thoughts. Although the sole act of being creative does not denote an individual to madness, the environment and social networks we are part of contribute to our psychological wellbeing.

While the tortured artist trope was conceived from the concept of a suffering introspective soul, recent years have seen the narrative of this trope shift. The tortured artist is no longer tormented by an inward pain, the suffering of an artist is now amplified by an economic climate that makes living as an artist increasingly difficult.

Despite this shift, the stereotype of the tortured artist will remain although as we continue to witness the gradual destigmatisation of mental health we can address the issues at the core of this trope. As a result, we can begin to move away from this romanticised image of the tortured artist toward a healthier stereotype.

As humanity progresses how will the tortured artist stereotype change? How will changes to the wider society impact on this persona? Will the art economy, already struggling in a post pandemic world plunge more creatives into mental instability?

If you have any thoughts on these and you are under 30 you can join Creative Spaces for our conversation around the tortured artist persona at 7pm, 8th July. For more information and to book a space please click the link below:
The Tortured Artist Stereotype: An Open Conversation

* John Matthews, Creativity and Mental Illness: Exploring the ‘Tortured Artist’, https://www.vacounseling.com/tortured-artist/.
** Simon Kyaga, Mikael Landen, Marcus Boman, Christina M Hultman, Niklas Langstrom, Paul Lichtenstein, Mental illness, suicide and creativity: 40-year prospective total population study, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23063328/.
*** Stephen A. Stansfeld, Jenny Head, Farhat Rasul, Occupation and mental health: Secondary analyses of the ONS Psychiatric Morbidity Survey of Great Britain, https://www.hse.gov.uk/research/rrpdf/rr168.pdf.

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Musings News

Accessibility and Inclusion, Reflections: Winston Denerley

Guest Blog Post by Winston Denerley

Over the past few months Winston has been working with the Stove team, and particularly the Creative Spaces and Soap Box projects to help us explore how to make our programming more accessible for the D/deaf community. We’ve learned a lot and really enjoyed having Winston as part of the team, and are looking forward to the conversations going forward!

Still of the BSL version of the Learn page available on our website here

“It was a really interesting start to my time with the Stove Network. I was proposing a project consisting of a Deaf Hub/Festival within the Kirkcudbright Arts and Crafts Festival. Due to complications with COVID-19, this had to be delayed and put on the back burner. While speaking with Katharine Wheeler about this project idea, she mentioned the Stove’s need to be more accessible, aware and inclusive of people with disabilities. Because of my lived-in experience of the deaf community, current studies of British Sign Language and passion for inclusivity, we felt as though I would be able to fulfil the organisation’s need to be more inclusive.

Over my short time working (remotely) for the Stove Network, I have really enjoyed being the voice for people that need it and invoking necessary change. To do this I have created British Sign Language interpretations of the website, contributed to meetings, been involved in a successful panel on Inclusive Communication and held an ‘Accessibility in the Arts’ conversation on the 28th of May. Both the panel and the conversation had a diverse mix of organisation representatives and disabled people allowing for important discussions to be had about access in the arts industry. In the panel discussion, I was a part of the team answering questions about my own experiences, however with the conversation I was a host asking questions and prompting responses from the speakers. I really enjoyed playing both roles as speaker as well as host and look forward to hosting/being involved in future conversations and discussions about important issues!

Screenshot from some of the content that went out on the Creative Spaces social media accounts in relation to the Accessibility in the Arts conversation

It has been really interesting to see a somewhat closed off industry learning to be more inclusive and accepting of different types of people. Through this, I have begun to wonder the significant changes that could be made to the world if all businesses, organisations, and corporations understood their lack of awareness and inclusivity and took large strides to change this. By doing this, some groups may no longer feel as though it is society that disables them because they are given the vital support they need. 

My mind is brimming with new ideas and projects, so I am excited to see what the future holds working with an exciting and constantly developing organisation that has all the right intentions. Conversations discussing important issues, content aimed at different audiences with different needs, project development support and so much more – the future looks bright!”

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Musings

David Clark’s April 2020 Diary

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Musings News

Not farewell, but fare forward voyager!

Ailsa playing for laughs with the financial report at The Stove AGM
Ailsa playing for laughs with the financial report at The Stove AGM

Written by Matt Baker.

In any organisation there are always very special people who invest so much of themselves into something that they leave part of themselves behind in it and it is hard to imagine the place without them. Ailsa Watson was one of those people for The Stove – she has literally built the foundations that we all stand on today. Quietly and modestly Ailsa has applied her very special skills to the task of giving structure and stability to an idea. An idea that she believed in and held dearly – to change the way we do things in our society and for the people who don’t usually have a voice in local decisions to have a platform and opportunity to show the world what they can do.

Ailsa leaves the Stove after working with us for 7 years, she is someone with many (and diverse!) interests, one of which is environmentalism and we are delighted that she is able to support this cause in her next career adventure with Future Woodlands Scotland.

For most people at The Stove. Ailsa has just simply ‘always been there’ – but in her modest way, not that many know the stories. Actually, Ailsa has been around longer than 7 years. Around 2011, Ailsa had fallen in love with a Doonhamer (she was in Glasgow at the time) and set about researching the creative scene locally, she heard whispers of something starting called The Stove and finally tracked us down in a long ‘visionary’ planning session in the Snug bar of The Globe. We were planning the first ever Stove event called ‘First Foot’ (part of the first Big Burns Supper) and Ailsa quickly convinced us that she was indispensable to making this happen…it turned out that she was. This was Just one of Ailsa’s many guises – that of tech wizard and project management guru. Somehow a bunch of people who had never worked together before managed to pull off a technical tour de force and Ailsa was right in the centre of that. And then she vanished, only to reappear three years later when The Stove advertised for an Administrator – although perhaps the most over-qualified administrator ever, Ailsa took the job and set about making herself indispensable again. Not long after (I wonder why?), The Stove was successful in securing Regular Funding from Creative Scotland and Ailsa’s work started in earnest to build the dream of an accessible and inclusive space for creatively changing the world in the heart of the Dumfries community.

So who is this multi-talented woman of mystery that keeps appearing at the right moment in handknitted jumpers and dungarees? Not many know that Ailsa actually studied at Art School (Camberwell in London) – which is more than can be said for some of the ‘artists’ who work at The Stove (eg me) – from there, everything is a bit murky with ‘diverse’ career paths including boatbuilding, ski guiding, software designing and creative enterprise support…so it is completely clear to anyone how she would end up managing the operations of a creative placemaking organisation in Dumfries.

Ailsa with Stove team at Surf Awards dinner 2016
Ailsa with Stove team at Surf Awards dinner 2016

Through her time at The Stove Ailsa has touched the lives of many – we all have reasons to thank Ailsa – for my part I have learned so much about creative problem solving and really going the extra mile for people – for others Ailsa has been a wise counsel in times of trouble, a careers adviser and guru on all things from computers, to tax returns, to fund raising, to hand spinning and knitting. Ailsa has always had her own take on everything and never been afraid to swim against the tide for what she believed was right. She was the best of The Stove and we will all miss her terribly – but we just know that the ‘knitted avenger’ could resurface at any moment and until she does, we wish her all the best and thank her with all our hearts for all she has been and done for everyone connected with The Stove.

We’d love to hear your stories of Ailsa – drop us a line?

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