Reflecting on developing my creative practice

Amidst the chaos of Arts Council Englands lousy grant application portal, Grantium, collapsing in July I was fortunate to receive the good news that my application to the highly competitive Arts Councils Developing your Creative Practice grants was successful. The grant gives me time to explore my practice as a musician and how I might integrate this into my early years dance practice. It feels like such a privilage to be awarded this time to research and explore my passion and the impact this will have on me as an artist is priceless. Over the next 8 months I get to observe the practice of other artists I admire, receive some mentoring, attend some early years arts festivals and conferences and of course spend some time playing in the studio using music as a creative starting point. I am intending to document my journey of discoveries in this blog for myself and anyone that is interested.

This month has started with a visit to Magic Acorns in Great Yarmouth whose work in early childhood arts stemming from grassroots music arts practice is pioneering. Their early years arts festival and professsional symposium, Ripple took place in September. I attended the one day symposium followed by a day of practical workshops, one led by Takeshi Matsumoto and one by Charlotte Arculus.

Brucie bonus!! I got to walk on the beach in the sunshine in Great Yarmouth

I enjoyed visiting Magic Acorns Playtech space, a research project which explores how technology can be used to create interactive sound based play spaces for children. I had my mind blown getting to play with prototype digital sound toys such as a box which emitted a sound when people made a chain by holding hands and when you squeezed hands it changed the pitch of the sound, it was mind boggling and great fun! They have created a beautiful immersive sensory space using projection and lots of soft stuff to sit on. Hanging from the ceiling were what looked like alien pods which responded to touch and made sounds. I'm told, everything is programmable via midi so the potential to create music is boundless.

At the symposium we got to listen to a range of inspiring speakers with questions posed including, how do the arts enable adults to learn from very young children? And what does learning generate for the arts culture and society? I was interested in the notion of exploring being the starting point for everything, much the approach I would take as a dancer and the provocation, what is music? also applies to dance... I love the idea that if you give a child an instrument with no instructions they will find a way to play it. We watched some extaordinary footage of children who had never played brass instruments before and were just given instruments with no instruction. They not only had great fun, by the end of the lesson they were making incredible sounds on instruments that taught the traditional way often take a long time to get a sound out of.

My takeaways from the day..... key qualities for working with early years are: sense, embody, communicate and imagine.... good to be reminded. Also a big one for me which applies to life in general as well as artistic practice...... slow down.....

The Sunday workshops started with Takeshi in the morning where we explored his dance practice with early years, specifically working with objects. Familiar territory for me as playing with props and objects to find movement/dance is something I do often in the studio. It was however, a fun workshop and so nice to be moving together with a lovely bunch of people.

The afternoon workshop with Charlotte was called Deep Listening, we gave each other a sound massage, improvised using a score and instruments, recorded some ambeint sounds on a sound walk in the rain and then finished with a follow my leader type sound game called Ghost, where one person made sound and everyone else copied (not call and response). This is a game I often play using movement and has made me wonder about many of the movement games and improvisations I play that can also be done with sound/music.

Last week I was also able to attend Spark Arts for Children, Music Champions Early Years symposium where learning was shared from their project through practical workshops and speakers. Once again the importance of child led play and fostering curiosity was at the forefront of the day. There were instruments on the table and we were encouraged to pick them up and explore them, resulting a spontaneous group improvisation which ebbed and flowed through a range of dynamics and came it its natural conclusion. I enjoyed taking part in practical workshops led by different artists on the project and included exploring a sensory environment with lots of sound making things, call and response with percussion and using sound to animate storytelling.

Reflecting on the speakers my take away for the day is about balancing child led interaction v's interference from the adult and the importance of bringing the focus back to the child every time.

Leaving you with some quotes that resonate....

"the wild state of early childhood lies at the heart of all adult creative endeavour"

"the creative adult is the child who survived" - Ursula LeGuin