How do you stay creatively healthy without a job?

Convener(s):Alex Hassell 

Participants: Penny, Ray, Maddy, Tim, Frankie 

Summary of discussion, conclusions and/or recommendations:

• CREATE YOUR OWN WORK
• Is Playing about with other creatives but no audience enough?
• Can we create/is there a network to share ideas, arrange meetings and general jamming sessions?
• There are some places for such sharing-Shunt Lounge, Scratch nights
• Reading, writing, watching, chatting, going to galleries, plays, can all help but are not enough
• Setting creative goals can help
• Is a job important at all to stay healthy? We put too much worth on a paid job to fulfil us, money and health/worth are not mutually exclusive
• We must learn to intrinsically know our worth as artist outside of work
• The poorer you are the more creative you need to be
• We need sharing of ideas and encouragement and mutual validation
• Your financial worth does not equal your artistic worth
• Everything we do is a creative act
• The danger is that drink, drugs and flamboyance often are used to fill the gap
• Perhaps rejection, dry spells and periods of lack are helpful and important
• Constant success could leave you barren
• Perhaps work is often a distraction from real life
• Perhaps we must be a professional audience and learn to find the theatre in everyday life
• Normal life is our tool and resource
• Theatre practitioners should be allowed into theatres for free
• Our job is to watch, listen. Learn, observe and then play back for others
• What do we physically need to enable ourselves to stay creatively healthy?
• Surely the Art Centres should provide such aids
• WE MUST BE PLAYFUL IN LIFE
• Perhaps the question should really not include anything about a job and simply be-how do you stay creatively healthy?
• Shame is disabling and we need to name it
• Perhaps we are too critical of ourselves and we should just do?
• The difficulty is that creative success is impossible to quantify but money isn’t however it is only numbers
• FUN FUN FUN FUN FUN FUN FUN FUN FUN FUN FUN FUN !!!!!!!!!!!