Create artist Rachel McGivern on supporting creativity and wellbeing in community settings
To mark Creativity and Wellbeing Week 2021, we spoke to our visual artist, Rachel McGivern, about her experience of delivering creative projects in community settings, particularly our creative:tandem project with patients at Snowsfields, an adolescent mental health unit in South London.
“I’ve always really enjoyed art. Even at school, it was the subject where I could just have a bit more freedom and explore creativity. When I was at university studying illustration, I realised I really enjoyed working with people and exploring creative activities. I feel like I get quite a lot from facilitating workshops, such as the conversations, meeting new people and seeing different points of view.
“My work falls within the umbrella of visual arts. I don’t work in one art form, I kind of spread out. That might be printmaking, weaving or sculpture. I work very much with groups, thinking about how we can share these skills, have an engaging experience with different participants and support their wellbeing. I took part in Create’s Nurturing Talent programme a couple of years ago. That was a really great experience. It taught me how to work with different community groups and helped me gain an understanding of the needs of each group and to bring that into my participatory practice.
Rachel McGivern talks about delivering arts projects in community settings
Supporting creativity online via Create Live!
“I’ve enjoyed delivering online workshops with Create during the pandemic via Create Live!. It’s a whole new way of working. I’ve had to readapt some of the activities and think about how they can translate online. Since I’m quite materials driven, I’ve enjoyed the challenge of thinking about using everyday things and making things in new ways using items from the recycling bin. Adapting my approach to bring that to different groups has been a really positive experience.
“I think creativity is really valuable to everyone. It gives us the time and space to explore an idea without the pressure of it being anything other than an idea and enjoy just the free flow of it.”
Rachel McGivern
“The creative:tandem project at Snowsfields Adolescent Unit was really interesting. Although we were working online, it almost felt like we were in a studio setup. Everyone was having a little bit of conversation, but very much getting on with their own personal project and exploration of the same activity, and being able to take it in any direction that they wanted to, facilitated by the staff on site. You could use the same equipment and the same materials in totally different ways. For the weaving session, for example, one of the participants preferred wrapping instead of weaving; another really liked the actual process of weaving as more of a structured thing. They created this massive loom and started weaving on that. We also had a session where they decorated their own bags with some fabric sprays and stencils, based on this idea of putting your own stamp on an item.
“The technology made it a bit difficult for me to have a direct conversation with the participants, but it felt like we were communicating through making. One of the young people was leaving the centre the day the bag decorating session took place so they were really happy to be able to take something away. Another described the sessions as ‘beautifully calm’, which was very nice.
“I think creativity is really valuable to everyone. It gives us the time and space to explore an idea without the pressure of it being anything other than an idea and enjoy just the free flow of it. I think some of the activities I do have an outcome, because it’s really nice to have that as a memory; but mostly, I’m really interested in the process, and the experience of making something. That’s why I love workshops. It’s more about the time and space to experiment and do something, try something new, challenge yourself and feel that pride of learning something new. It brings so much happiness.”
Rachel McGivern talks about her experience of working with Create
2020 has been an exceptionally difficult year for professional artists. Across the board, the UK’s cultural sector has been battered by the coronavirus pandemic. At Create we’re supporting artists during the pandemic.
Culture brings us together, whether that’s listening to a classical concert, wandering around a packed gallery or dancing the night away at a gig. But the pandemic has forced many cultural institutions to close and remain closed. Those that have been able to open have had to cope with dramatically reduced capacity and uncertain last-minute lockdowns.
For those of us whose lives are enhanced and expanded by the arts, this has been a profound loss. For many artists it has been a disaster, stripping them of their livelihoods, their entire income, their vocation and their wellbeing. Some have been able to diversify and take their practices online, but this has not been an option for every artform.
Thanks to the pandemic, the cultural industry, which contributes £11bn a year to the economy and supports 363,700 jobs*, has suffered potentially irreparable damage.
How Create supports Artists
At Create, we’ve always platformed and supported artists. We value the importance of the creative arts in our collective lives and are passionate about their transformative and long-lasting impact.
All our artists are freelance professional practitioners in their specialist field (eg: dance, filmmaking; music, sculpture), who combine a passion for their artform with a love of people. Through our carefully-tailored programmes, our artists are able to expand their own artistic horizons, exploring new ideas and developing ambitious projects that benefit both our participants and their own artistic practice.
When the first lockdown was announced and we could no longer meet in person, we knew that our work couldn’t stop – it had never been more vital – which is why we adapted at break-neck speed. For our participants and professional artists, Create’s workshops offer a lifeline.
Here are some of the ways that we have supported our artists:
Create live!
Having worked with our artists to research, safeguard and pilot a new way of working via Zoom, we used emergency funding from Arts Council England to develop and deliver a series of programmes that offered creative work for our artists and workshops for our participants struggling with lockdown across the UK.
This summer – via Create Live! – we delivered more workshops than ever before, meaning more work for our artists and more inspirational projects that have empowered, upskilled and connected our participants, reducing isolation and enhancing wellbeing.
Here, our professional photographer Alejandra Carles-Tolra talks about delivering a project with Kingston Young Carers via Create Live!.
Nurturing Talent
Nurturing Talent, our programme for emerging artists, offers an opportunity for early-career artists who wish to combine a professional artistic practice with creative workshop delivery in community settings.
We provide a £1,500 bursary and opportunities to develop their facilitation skills alongside our experienced professional artists with different community groups. The programme involves four tailored training days, two artist sharing days, and the opportunity to design and deliver a workshop collaboratively.
Launched in 2016, this programme has still been running during the pandemic, empowering and upskilling six passionate and talented artists across dance, drama, filmmaking, music, and visual art. Find out more.
“I will leave this year a more technical musician, a more experienced facilitator and, most importantly, with an absolute dedication to helping the vulnerable and disadvantaged members of society.”
holly khan, nurturing talent artist
Artist Sharing/training Days
When lockdown first happened, we provided free training in Zoom workshop delivery to upskill our artists to this new way of working. Each has then had the chance to trial a workshop with the Create team ahead of going “live” in the community.
We also provide our artists and project team with free six-monthly skill-building, training and networking opportunities at Artist Sharing events that take place annually in May and November. With external speakers and artist-led workshops, the days focus on topics such as working in prisons and safeguarding, helping to upskill, inform and inspire. The most recent workshop in 2020 focused on Wellbeing, both that of our participants and the artists themselves.
“It’s nice to have a relationship with an organisation. I started off on Nurturing Talent, learning from the lead facilitators. Now, I can look back at my initial learning at Create and see my growth and development to lead facilitator within the organisation.”
Create artist Jack Pryor
Our commitment to artists
2020 has been an incredibly challenging year for artists but it seems that there is finally a light at the end of the tunnel, with a vaccine on the horizon. There is now hope that the industry can recover, and artists can continue doing what they love. In the meantime, and into the future, we will continue to support our artists through our projects – both Create Live! and in-venue – and ongoing training, and to reach out to a new generation of creatives through our Nurturing Talent programme.
Beth Coleman is a professional choreographer, performer, acrobat, actress and Create artist. As our new project concept Create Live! came together we worked with Beth to develop an interactive, online dance project for young carers.
Create Live! is Create’s online, interactive project initiative developed to reach participants during the lockdown, offering a creative lifeline to the most vulnerable children and adults in isolation.
We spoke to Beth about the challenges and opportunities of dancing on Zoom.
“In my Create dance workshops, I’m giving people the tools to choreograph themselves. It’s not about developing perfect technique but exploring how movement can make you feel and help you express yourself.
“It was important to make the workshop dynamic: the brilliant thing about dance, and any kind of physical activity, is the atmosphere and magic that happens in the room. You get it in the theatre and you get it in Create workshops as well. Everyone feels that charge of energy. Just as there is a connection between performer and audience, there is a spark between fellow participants, relationships develop through a shared experience of moving, creating and performing.
“The nature of creating anything, and allowing others to witness this process requires vulnerability and courage.”
Beth Coleman
“I was really concerned that that connection you get from dancing together wouldn’t happen via Zoom, but by day three it fizzed into life. There was still that spark that makes being creative so addictive and makes me really believe in the arts.”
READING THE ROOM
“Running a project over Zoom posed significant challenges and I had to work extra hard to make sure everyone was engaged and included. Because you’re looking at 15 different Zoom boxes at the same time, you can’t use your peripheral vision, and that’s challenging in terms of trying to read how everyone is feeling, and honing in on multiple pieces of choreography simultaneously. This was as crucial via zoom as it is in a live workshop. The nature of creating anything, and allowing others to witness this process requires vulnerability and courage. I need to see, and encourage, and help develop every participant’s creative input so that I can provide a safe and supportive environment within which participants can explore their creativity.
“One of the tasks that the young carers responded really well to was a writing task that they later used to inspire a piece of choreography. It’s important to give participants a break because dance workshops are really tiring! I encouraged the young people to write a monologue based on the senses during lockdown. New things they might have seen or heard, things they can’t touch etc.
“Writing is a useful tool because it gives the young people a structure for creating movement. Being asked to create a dance of eight counts based on how you’re feeling can be overwhelming if you don’t know where to start. But if you ask people to write about how they’re feeling and then turn the words in the monologue into a move … before you know it, they’ve got an entire piece of choreography.”
BRAVE AND CONFIDENT
“Every project I do for Create has culminated in a sharing of work. I treat that sharing as I would any other show, but all the creativity is coming from the young people and my job is to bring it all together into one piece. Over Zoom I did exactly the same thing. I changed how I did it, but I was aiming for the same outcome.
“I don’t think working online put up any new barriers in terms of the young people’s confidence. Because they were in their own homes, they were even more expressive when they were dancing because it was harder to see anyone else’s reaction on the tiny screens. So they really went for it, which was the beauty of it.
“Seeing the young people speak their text and dance in the final performance was an amazing moment. I was really struck by how brave and open they were with their writing. I think dance can be so good for both our mental and physical health. Just getting moving can change how we feel.
“I hope the workshop enabled the young people to use their creativity as a way to process how they’re feeling at this time. The performance at the end of the three days was aesthetically really beautiful and emotive to watch.
“I think everyone should be doing something creative.”
MEET SKY ARTS’ PORTRAIT ARTIST OF THE YEAR 2020, CHRISTABEL BLACKBURN
Christabel Blackburn has designed a pandemic-inspired T-shirt to benefit Create, with 50% of the proceeds going to support our work. Here she explains why she is supporting us – and the importance of creativity in her life.
“I think we’re all agreed that creativity has been the answer to getting us through this pandemic,” says Christabel Blackburn, the recent winner of Sky Arts’ ‘Portrait Artist of the Year’ competition. “No matter what is going on outside, if you are creative you can always go within to find ways to get inspired.”
Blackburn, who beat more than 70 competitors and thousands of applicants to win the competition, is a firm believer in the power of creativity and its ability to help us navigate our way through difficult times.
“I have always felt passionately that the arts have the ability to heal and inspire.”
Christabel Blackburn
“I have two kids,” she says, “and my husband and I have both been working from home, so coming up with fresh ways to keep them occupied was a challenge: music and arts activities always trump playing with toys. For me, being able to escape to my studio from time to time was the tonic I needed to be able to cope with those challenges.”
LOCKDOWN DRAWINGS
Blackburn has been busy since winning the ‘Portrait Artist of the Year’ competition back in March. As part of her prize, she travelled to Connecticut to paint a portrait of musician Nile Rodgers, which will go on display in the Royal Albert Hall. She has also been creating pieces inspired by the pandemic and our lives under lockdown.
A collection of ‘social distancing’ drawings, created for an initiative called the Artist Support Pledge, all sold out within two hours of going live on her website. Blackburn has now decided to turn her favourite of those images, entitled Social Distancing outside a Post Office, into a T-shirt (pictured). She is selling this via her website, with 50% of the proceeds going to support our work.
“While we’ve all found lockdown challenging, I wanted to find a charity that could help disadvantaged and vulnerable adults and children in isolation,” she says. “I read about your Create Live! Zoom workshops with professional artists and support for older people in isolation, and knew I wanted to be a part of it.
“I have always felt passionately that the arts have the ability to heal and inspire. I hope that people will see this as a way to raise money for Create and an opportunity to buy a screen-printed artwork more affordably. While we’ve all found lockdown challenging, I wanted to find a charity that could help disadvantaged and vulnerable adults and children in isolation. I feel so lucky to have discovered this inspirational charity and hope I’ll be able to do more to support you in the future.”
Only 500 T-shirts have been produced in the initial run, priced at £25 each, so you’ll have to act fast to get your hands on one. The T-shirts are available on Blackburn’s website.
Nicky Goulder, our CEO said: “We are delighted and excited to have this support from Christabel. The money that she raises through sales of her impactful, topical T-shirt will enable us to empower the lives of some of society’s most isolated children and adults at a time when they deserve our support more than ever. Christabel’s work captures the loneliness so many of us have felt during the pandemic, and her support of our participant groups in this way is a perfect synergy. The Portrait Artist of the Year competition had me on the edge of my seat. That the incredible winner approached us to offer her support will inspire and delight our participants.”
Mike Poyser is a professional musician and Create artist. As our new project concept Create Live! came together we worked with Mike to develop a creative online project for young carers.
Create Live! is Create’s online, interactive project initiative developed to reach participants during the lockdown, offering a creative lifeline to the most vulnerable children and adults in isolation.
“It was an intense process adapting a Create music project for online delivery. Mild panic was my initial reaction! Nicky [Create’s Founding CEO] and I spoke on a Friday night, right at the start of lockdown, about the possibilities of workshops continuing online, how some aspects could work while others would be more of a challenge. We talked about safeguarding challenges and tech challenges and how we could innovate the work to keep reaching participants.
Mike Poyser hosting a staff trial workshop
“The following week we decided to put together a couple of sample workshops – firstly with the Create staff team as participants and then with a small group of young carers who Create has worked with a lot. How to get around the latency issue was the biggest challenge musically. In an in-venue session it is simple to play as a group, but over the Internet differing connection speeds mean that each participant hears the music at slightly different times. The solution for this was a combination of live performance and recorded performance. Recording sections of audio from the Zoom session meant we could take rhythmic ideas and combine them between sessions to create a band, then the live performance element was added on top of this.
“From these sample workshops, we learned a lot about the tech and what could work musically and how to create something quite effective and interesting. This led to a very long weekend of preparing and planning for nine consecutive music sessions with a group from Action for Young Carers in Nottingham.
THE WORKSHOP
The young carers perform a “horror” track with Mike Poyser
“During the workshops the first thing we discovered is the young people are totally chilled about the idea of working online – one participant even had their gamer headset on! We also realised that even though we were still in our own houses the combination of Zoom and some music instantly removed the isolation we probably all feel.
“We played musical games, we hunted our houses for instruments to play (pasta to shake, combs as a guiro, pots and pans to bash, books to slap together) and we started to play around with rhythms on these repurposed instruments. Once we had some cool patterns, we took recordings of these samples.
“On another session, we worked on writing lyrics for a blues piece. We learnt the structure of the blues and then put our spin on it. We even managed to perform this live, with keyboard and tuba in London and vocals coming from Nottingham!
“I was able to put together a track of the repurposed drum rhythms and the blues vocals. Once the participants had heard this and just how good it sounded, we were in business for writing more material, and we ended up creating quite an epic sounding dance track as well!
“For me, the first time we all met in the Zoom Room was really special. We are all stuck in our houses at the moment, and to see everyone meet and have fun through music was lovely! I was also amazed at how great the recordings through Zoom were and seeing everyone’s reactions when our first piece had been created was fantastic.”
TIPS FOR BEING CREATIVE AT HOME
Listen to your body and your mind. If you are feeling inspired, find some time and space to explore that. Also, be aware that some days you may just fancy watching TV.
The scariest part of creating something new is to stare at a blank piece of paper, so once you are in the zone just write ideas down as they come to you. The more ideas you have the better. Once you have some ideas you like then think about how to develop them. And then develop them!
Don’t put pressure on yourself. A song about cleaning the bathroom can be a really fun thing to write about. It doesn’t need to be turned into a hit, it can be a song that you enjoy. The process of writing it is the great part of it anyway.
James Baldwin is a professional theatre maker/writer and Create artist. As our new project concept Create Live! came together we worked with James to develop a creative online radio drama project for young carers in Ealing/Hounslow.
Create Live! is Create’s online, interactive project initiative developed to reach participants during the lockdown, offering a creative lifeline to the most vulnerable children and adults in isolation.
“Keeping the work rooted in the principles of face-to-face workshop is central to developing a workshop for Create Live! delivery. The key is flexibility and being able to think on the spot. You need to have more than enough material, which is a potential difficulty when you’re working online. You can generate 100 hours’ worth of games and activities but how many of those games will work when all you have is a small screen? Drama games are often about improvisation and being able to read people’s body language, so adapting drama games to work online took some ingenuity.
“It’s about being able to embrace the technology to achieve your aim: to have fun and make the participants feel valued.”
James Baldwin
“When technology becomes a faff you have to prioritise the workshop goals and keeping it all fun. Throughout the planning of the workshop I was asking myself “why are we doing that game?” and “what are we trying to achieve?”. Making a group connection is tricky when you’re disconnected physically. So, it’s important to prioritise things that might seem small but make the participants feel comfortable. For example, letting them know that their name is on the screen and making sure they have it displayed how they want it. It’s about being able to embrace the technology to achieve your aim: to have fun and make the participants feel valued.
James Baldwin leading one of the workshops
“What does translate really well from face-to-face to online, is making yourself the example. If you want people to be a bit daft you have to demonstrate that by being super daft. And if you want people to be serious, you demonstrate that by being more serious.
“The young people were interested in so many things: COVID-19, power dynamics, global warming, magic. Being able to harness all these ideas as a facilitator and enabling the young people to write a script about the things that matter to them, but also offers an element of escapism, is important.
“So this script took the idea of global warming and it took the idea of COVID-19 but it used the idea of wizardry and sorcery to take these ideas into a magic realm. The young people are able to express what they want about the pandemic and all the things that are important to their lives, but with an element of escapism because you’ve changed the rules of that world to incorporate magic and wizardry and witchcraft.”
ALEJANDRA CARLES-TOLRA ON RUNNING A CREATE LIVE! PROJECT
Alejandra Carles-Tolra is a professional photographer and Create artist. As our new project concept Create Live! came together we worked with Alejandra to develop a creative online photography project for young carers.
Create Live! is Create’s online, interactive project initiative developed to reach participants during the lockdown, offering a creative lifeline to the most vulnerable adults and children in isolation.
Below, Alejandra reflects on the experience of developing and facilitating a Create Live! project with young carers from Kingston.
“I asked the young carers to work with the personal things that were around them, to look at their homes with new eyes and find inspiration in these everyday things.”
Alejandra Carles-Tolra
Alejandra leading a Create Live! workshop
“Developing and running a Create Live! project was a very interesting challenge. At first, I worried it was going to feel very impersonal, that I wouldn’t be able to adapt to each person’s needs in a virtual room, but that wasn’t the case at all. The way the work translated over video call was surprising in a really positive way. It felt much closer to an in-person Create project than I was expecting.
“In normal circumstances, when I am in the same room as participants, the first day of my workshops is always focused on building trust between the participants and me and ensuring that everyone feels comfortable, encouraged and not overwhelmed by the creative exercises. The worst thing would be if someone felt, ‘oh this is not for me, I’m terrible at photography’ and felt discouraged. I wanted to create the same atmosphere over Zoom.
Alejandra Carles-Tolra, from her The Light Coming In series
“I begin all my workshops by asking people to be aware of the surroundings, to notice the space we’re in and to try to find light and inspiration there. The way I managed the transition online was to think of the current situation and the spaces the participants were in. I asked the young carers to work with the personal things that were around them, to look at their homes with new eyes and find inspiration in these everyday things. It doesn’t matter what tools you have, it’s a way of looking at the world. This approach can be adapted to any space and participants can take these skills and this mindset anywhere.
“Sharing our work online, after three days creating together, was very special. Everyone seemed very happy and very proud of the work and the time that we had spent together. It was wonderful that family members and loved ones were able to join them on the screen. In the past not everyone has the time to come and look so that was really special.
“By the end of the project it felt as though we had forgotten that we were not in a real space together; it didn’t feel strange that we had spent five hours in this virtual room. I think that was possible because the project combined the participants’ physical spaces and the virtual world: we were constantly reminding ourselves of the real world around us by taking photographs. Collaboration is always at the centre of my work and during this period of increased isolation it felt essential that the young carers could collaborate and share their creative work and ideas with each other. This was made possible by using break-out rooms, virtual ‘rooms’ where smaller groups of participants could meet and discuss inspiration and ideas. Although there were some technological challenges, on the whole the project was a great success. I will definitely be taking some of the ideas generated from the virtual project into my work going forward.”
Photographs from Alejandra’s isolation photography series The Light Coming In.
HOLLY REVELL ON QUEER IDENTITY PHOTOGRAPHY WORKSHOPS AT METRO CHARITY
Holly Revell is a Create artist and professional photographer specialising in queer performance, portraits and documentation of transforming identities. Holly’s work is archived at Bishopsgate Institute.
Below, we hear from Holly about the experience of facilitating our queer identity photography workshops:
“In January and February 2020, I ran a series of workshops with METRO Charity’s LGBTQ youth group Zest, made up of young queer people aged 12-16. As soon as I met the group, I could SEE their queerness. It was wonderful to step into the future where gender felt fluid and visible. I hadn’t worked with such young queer people before and I was excited to find out about their stories. Queer culture is so fast-moving, I was curious about how relevant my work would be to these young people.
“I started the project by showing participants some work from my archive of queer performance photography, introducing them to some of the icons and trailblazers such as David Hoyle, Scottee, Jonny Woo and co, Ginger Johnson, Travis Alabanza and Chiyo Gomes.
Sabah Choudrey, People Like Us, 2019 – copyright Holly Revell
“I was impressed by how engaged and interested the young participants were in the performers and the photographs I was showing them. They had a thirst for learning about their history. Is this because queer history is harder to find, lesser-known and untaught I wonder?
“What was intended as a short introduction became a more central part of the workshops: each week we would take inspiration from queer icons. I soon realised that they know their history and are extremely passionate about it! There were some great moments, from a 14-year-old trans person talking about Alan Turing and a discussion about Philip Schofield’s coming out that day, to a 12-year-old boy pulling out a book titled ‘queer icons’ from his school bag.
“I expected them to know Rupaul’s Drag Race as that has become so mainstream, and they did, but I was heartened to find that they were also interested in more avant-garde examples of drag performers. I was able to broaden their horizons by showing them performers who were resisting Rupaul, performers who were ‘not allowed into the club’ and who criticised its lack of inclusivity.
“In the practical photography sessions, we had participants emulating some of my most iconic images such as ‘Ginger Johnson – Breakfast’ replacing the milk with sugar, which they poured over themselves – getting messy like true queer artists do and acting out scenarios about homophobia in the office.
“We had a queer wedding with all its drama and affairs being performed for the camera, a David Hoyle- inspired self-portrait made by a 12-year-old boy and a gay soldier’s funeral where the union jack flag was replaced with the rainbow flag.
“I helped set up a series of beautiful images inspired by a participant’s relationship to their safe space in the cupboard and how they’d grown both physically and in confidence. I showed them images of Claude Cahun who they put me in mind of. This person seemed so shy at first but really opened up and embraced the workshops.
“Some participants also created a hilarious video made in the style of a YouTube make-up tutorial. This was loosely inspired by a Divine David video I’d shown them previously and by current trends such as Rupaul – it was both amusing and interesting to hear afab (assigned female at birth) non-binary young people paraphrase ‘the snatch game’ and its misogynistic undertones.
“Overall, this series of workshops was a huge success with many laughs and some beautiful images made during the process. There were different personalities in the group, some of the young people natural performers and very confident with their gender and sexuality. Others were very shy and self-conscious, preferring to be behind the camera taking more natural candid photographs.
“When I was planning the workshops, I had a good idea of what I wanted the young people to do. I wanted them to create a powerful series of portraits. However, I soon realised that the participants would dictate the results and they were a lot more playful and candid than I had anticipated. I had to let go of my ambitions and remember how powerful and queer these fleeting moments captured with blur and colour were.”
Holly Khan is a Guyanese British multi-instrumentalist, composer and music facilitator.
Based in London, she is an exceptional emerging artist who was selected for Create’s Nurturing Talent Programme for 2019/20. Holly sat down with us to talk about her journey into music, the power of melody in community facilitation and how Create’s Nurturing Talent programme has developed her practice so far.
We are delighted to have you on our Nurturing Talent programme this year. What inspired you to become a musician?
I’m five years old and squashed in-between my parents at the Royal Albert Hall completely and utterly in awe of my older siblings performing with Harrow Young Musicians. I have a perfect view of the orchestra pit and something catches my attention. The strings. The strings are perfectly synchronised – their bows move simultaneously and I’m mesmerised. As I grew older I was also part of Harrow Young Musicians and had the opportunity to perform such a diverse repertoire of music, from Mahler to Mark-Anthony Turnage, Hans Zimmer to Handel.
I loved being a cog within the machine, contributing to a greater whole. I love the immediacy of orchestral performance, how it transports its listeners back in time or to another place altogether. I had fallen in love with music and the power it had; it was very clear I could never do anything else.
Holly at a young age: “I had fallen in love with music; it was very clear I could never do anything else.”
Your music has a wonderful immediacy to it. The string instruments and the drums create a rhythm that seem to be addressed directly to the heart of the listener. How do you compose your music and achieve this emotional depth?
I believe music infiltrates us in a different way to other artforms. It penetrates right past our conscious thinking and that’s what I’m most interested in, how we listen to, play and feel music.
Strings are the closest instrument to the human voice. I think that’s why we connect so easily to them. As a string player my process always starts with melody. A melody for me is usually inspired by something as simple as watching someone on the bus. Using their rhythmic tendencies, their dynamics, their flair and style and translating it into a melody! As I perform live frequently I use loop pedals and other electronic devices to layer melodic lines over one another, creating a cacophony of sound.
“There is a huge sense of togetherness when creating, a shared sense of ownership and agency and I believe this connection can go on to improve everyday skills.”
Holly Khan
You are half Guyanese and half British. How has this mixture of cultures influenced your practice?
It’s taken me a long time to delve into my Guyanese heritage and my interest in Guyana first sparked through music. As a composer and musician in my 20s, I delved into Guyanese music. It is such a rich fusion of so many different genres and this made perfect sense as Guyana is a big cultural mix. This spoke to me as I am a fusion – a hybrid, a mash of different cultural identities. I think without knowing it for years I was going about things the Guyanese way, being a magpie and collecting things that spoke to me and implementing them into my practice.
I feel like I have a responsibility in my workshops to offer more than the white-British standpoint and to cover lots of experiences sonically. Growing up I was not offered this exploration and it meant I didn’t know any Guyanese songs or South American songs. I want to use music to champion participants’ heritage!
Holly facilitating a workshop
Working with people through your musical practice is an important part of your professional journey. Why do you believe that creativity can help people experiencing disadvantages?
At the beginning of every workshop I ask the participants the same question “What is your relationship to music?” and every time I hear the most incredible stories. Everyone has a relationship to music and to this day I’ve never met anyone who is indifferent to it. Music allows participants to be equal and start on a level playing field. Creating something new that has never been made before forces us to be temporarily outside our comfort zone. There is a huge sense of togetherness when creating, a shared sense of ownership and agency and I believe this connection can go on to improve everyday skills. Being creative is sometimes seen as a privilege but I truly believe everyone has the right to be creative, wherever you come from, whatever your past.
You have been doing a diverse range of work with Create as one of the artists on our Nurturing Talent programme. What has been your experience of the programme so far?
Create’s Nurturing Talent programme has been an incredible opportunity for me. I have learnt from such a vast pool of artists with diverse backgrounds and met a huge number of participants! Being part of the Create family has made me see how beneficial arts are to the community, how powerful it is to collaborate and how shared experiences can be transformational. I will leave this year a more technical musician, a more experienced facilitator and, most importantly, with an absolute dedication to helping the vulnerable and disadvantaged members of society!
You have a packed schedule planned for the rest of the year. What should our readers be looking forward to?
2020 is looking to be a really exciting year! Ticker, a play that I composed the music for, has been confirmed for runs at both Soho Theatre and Northern Stage. East London Cable, who I am collaborating with to develop an immersive piece, shared an extract of the work at Tate Modern in December. The full show will be performed in Paris in March. I am also collaborating with participants to produce an album to mark Fairbeats’ 10 year anniversary! And finally, I am in the very early stages of developing my own social enterprise that looks at combatting loneliness and social isolation through music!
Holly Khan is a workshop facilitator with Angel Shed Theatre Company, Ark Music, Moving Waves, GLUE and Tarka Beats. She has developed a young carers choir with Dreamarts and is in the early stages of developing her own social enterprise that looks at combatting loneliness and social isolation through music.
We are very grateful to The Arts Society through the Patricia Fay Memorial Fund and Charles Lloyd-Jones for supporting the Nurturing Talent programme – this funding is enabling dedicated, talented, emerging artists such as Holly to embed within their artistic practice the skills and experience needed to work within challenging community settings.
Nurturing Talent
Learn more about our programme for emerging artists
Disorientated and blind-folded, a group of 15 people were individually led into an unknown room. With no visual understanding of where they were in relation to whom and what, they only had their bodily experience of moving through and into a space. This was the beginning of Amy Toner’s distinction-awarded performance c. 2018, in which the artist explored a non-occularcentric spectatorship of dance. By immersing her audience into darkness through blackout eye-masks, Amy prioritised and enhanced the non-visual senses: touch, smell and sound.
One of the spectators potently described his experience: “the rustling sound of slowly scrunching and manipulating a metallic foil sheet made the hairs on my neck stand on end”. In line with the growing intensity of sound, performers began to run around the space, circling in-between, through and behind the audience. In doing so, they created an intense circulation of wind that was physically felt by the audience. Simultaneously, the warm aroma of lemongrass was distilled in the space, adding to the layers of sensory stimulants.
During the exploration of touch, the audience was invited to perform a tactile version of Michelangelo’s painting The Creation of Adam (c. 1508-1512). The blind-folded spectators were guided through a narrated journey (see text at the end of the blog), leading them to the moment of touch within the painting. The spoken word invited audience members to perform the movement physically with their arms, with some spectators raising their arm and index finger. They were each greeted by their ‘creator’ – a performer – who reached out their own index finger to meet the audience member’s. Amy gave her audience the opportunity not to see, but to feel, Michelangelo’s masterpiece.
The choreography of Amy Toner is a quest to understand how people perceive the world. “When considering how we understand performance, there is a large emphasis on the mind. For many, it is through the eyes that the mind makes sense of things, takes in and processes information and therefore eyes have domain over other human senses. But the whole of us lives and exists in the world. The body communicates, listens and understands as a whole entity. I was interested, therefore, in exploring and unpicking other bodily modes of dance spectatorship, modes of spectatorship that move beyond the visual. Some questions I am still researching: Where does the performance exist? In your mind or in your body as a whole?”
In her exploration of movement and spectatorship, Amy Toner joins the league of contemporary dance innovators such as Jerome Bel, Boris Charmatz, Xavier Le Roy and Meg Stuart who critiqued and questioned the conventions of dance practice. “Practitioners in the field of contemporary dance have climbed down buildings, stood on stage in stillness, eaten fruit. They have presented this as dance. Although this is not where my own work lies, I have always been inspired by this questioning, especially in terms of the aesthetic of dance and how and where it is presented.”
“During the rehearsal process of [Title], I was interested to see if I could choreograph the show while I was blindfolded: I wanted to create the work through bodily sensation and physical experience alone. For example, a large part of the process was concerned with researching how to translate movement into something that might be physically experienced by the audience members. This was explored by focusing on generating wind through bodily movement – such as turning, jumping, swooping – which could be physically ‘felt.’ Although this was a challenging process, it opened up completely new ways of making work and a new ‘aesthetic’ for my own choreographic practice.”
Already, as a young scholar of dance, Amy’s initiatives have received wide recognition. Since graduating with a first-class degree in Dance from The University of Chichester and gaining a distinction-awarded Masters in Dance from London Contemporary Dance School, she has been invited to share her innovative approach to performance-making by some of the world’s leading cultural institutions. These include the Royal Academy of Arts in London and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam.
At its core, Amy’s practice is deeply concerned with ethics. “An integral part of my practice is concerned with making work based on my perspective on current social issues. Recently my study of choreography has explored our image-saturated society and how it forms our ideas about beauty. I have also explored the issue of loneliness and the current crisis of touch which was inspired by Paula Cocozza’s article in The Guardian, “No hugging: Are we living though a crisis of touch?”. This explores how touch is being “edged out of our lives” and how that has severe effects on our mental health.”
Amy Toner performing at Stedelijk Museum in 2018
“Currently I am making a performance about mental health. The project is centred on the phenomenology of tears and explores the stigma of crying, and in particular, the social mechanism related to the public display of emotional tears. I believe that art should be responding to current social issues and, as a result, spark important conversations.”
Amy’s rejection of the idea that dance is solely a visual medium is much more than an original approach. Amy creates a powerfully inclusive performance, which gives visually impaired audience members the opportunity to engage with the medium of dance. Since [Title], Amy has been developing an inclusive practice in all areas of her work, including teaching, facilitation and choreography. “I am passionate about bringing dance and performance to contexts where people might not have the opportunity to attend a theatre or a show. For instance, I have brought dance work to care homes, nurseries, schools and community centres.”
“Creativity, and particularly dance, has extremely positive effects on people’s physical and mental wellbeing.”
Amy Toner
“I have also continued to research embedding access tools, such as audio description, within the work itself. Typically, audio description is transmitted via a headset, which is experienced by audience members individually. However, I am interested in integrating the method of audio description within the performance itself. This mode of integration does not require headsets. Instead it is embedded through a character on stage or through a venue’s PA system.”
“There are a lot of preconceptions about what it means to be a dancer, for instance, you have to be a certain type of person with a certain type of body. In my facilitation and teaching practice, I show people that this is not the case. I believe that anyone and any body can move, dance, shake, turn, twist and explore. I believe that creativity results in new ways of thinking and being in the world. It brings people together, offers a sense of freedom and is a mode of self-expression and self-awareness. When we create, we access our own thoughts, feelings and imagination.”
“Creativity, and in my experience particularly dance, also has extremely positive effects on both people’s physical and mental wellbeing. Dance is an active and social art form. Dance happens with people together; it is a collective experience. This is why I love working for Create, as it offers diverse and accessible ways for participants to explore their own creativity, express their ideas and, very importantly, have fun! At a time when the arts are being forced out of the educational system in the UK, alongside constant funding cuts, organisation like Create, which are keeping creativity alive, are incredibly important.”
Nurturing Talent
We are extremely proud to have Amy Toner on this year’s Nurturing Talent programme, which was designed to give emerging artists the opportunity to work as supporting artists on Create’s workshops.
Amy has worked particularly closely with young carers, giving them time away from their caring responsibilities, allowing them to have fun, build new skills and friendships, and develop confidence and self-esteem through her specialisation in dance. We look forward to witnessing how Amy’s inclusive dance practice will help to reshape our society’s approach to choreographed performance.
We are very grateful to The Arts Society through the Patricia Fay Memorial Fund and Charles Lloyd-Jones for supporting the Nurturing Talent programme – this funding is enabling dedicated, talented, emerging artists such as Amy to embed within their artistic practice the skills and experience needed to work within challenging community settings.