August 2020 saw Activate and b-side team up to deliver a free online course for people in Dorest aged 16-25. CREATE! Developing Your Idea supported 15 young people from across the county to explore what is involved in shaping creative ideas and learn how to make events a reality.
In this mini-series we invite the course participants to tell us about their experience. Here’s Kinnari’s story.
Why did you apply to take part in CREATE!?
I applied to take part in CREATE! because there were certain technical aspects of producing art shows and managing the entire process that were not taught to us in university and are essential to know. Making good art is not the only thing an artist needs to do nowadays, there’s social media management, taking an effort to present your own work to the general public and keeping them engaged. University taught me to make good and critical art, but I wanted to learn all the steps to producing an art show. The course was also a way to get to know like-minded creatives that are actively taking steps to engage the general public.
Did you learn anything on the course that surprised you?
Yes! The surprising amount of planning that goes into producing a show. I did not think that planning and budgeting would be such intense and long processes. And just how difficult it is to secure funding. But also, through the talks and experiences of different people that appeared throughout the course, I learned ways in which these daunting tasks can become easier to manage.
What is one key take-away that you learned on the CREATE! course?
Creating is more than just a creative idea, it’s marketing, budgeting, risk assessments, insurance, collaborations and a lot more. Thank you for making these visible and easier to accomplish through the steps and tricks taught on the course.
What are your next steps?
I have launched a platform called ‘Contemporary Questions Colonial’ through which I will experiment ways to contribute to the wider argument of post-colonialism. Through collaborations, blogs, podcasts and residencies, this platform will provide artists and writers a voice and will question how does the past affect the way we are now and our ways of seeing the world? The long-term plan is to collaborate with museums to host an exhibition of contemporary works that directly questions their colonial histories. Museums can never be devoid of the incentives that made it in the first place but there might be room for reparations to the voices that were buried in the process.