Monica herbert, 11 January 2016

Session called by; Monica Herbert & Steve Whinnery

Attendee's: Monica Herbert, Steve Whinnery, J Caroline Horton, Kalila Storey, Vivian

Ezugha, Vcezugha, Janeralls Dance.

Summery of Discussion

> Difficult to work full time and then create, devise, research your work or develop your

Art's Practice.

> It is scary to think of how you have to juggle working and claiming on the

‘In-between’.

> The current benefit system is difficult for artist's.

> They need a system that helps artist's that have no money to support themselves

in-between jobs.

> The benefit system and it's sanction's affect artist's with children, who are disabled

or any “other”.

> The government has psychotically affected people so much in there thinking about

using the benefit system quite legitimately. Many are now ashamed to make a claim

despite desperately needing to.

> Artist's need to challenge this much more.

> One person commented that they did not want to sign-on when they really needed it

because of the stigma, another said that they did not even tell their friends that they

had to claim.

> Another person mentioned that in Europe they support their less well off artist's

much more than in UK.

> decades ago there was no stigma for an artist to claim benefit's, and much more

passionate and challenging work emerged because of different type's of people being

in the arts.

> Their was a recent report that stated that the Art's was dominated by the middle

classes, our government needs to do more to assist poor artist's.

>Many people of stopped being artist's because of the ‘In-between’. time.

>People/Women in particular leave the field because of this ‘In-between’ time.

> In France they have a government run system that support's Artist's during the

‘In-between’ time

> England could do well to consider this type of system because artist's are part of the

life blood of a country.

>attendee commented that this feels almost like the beginning of a movement…

Tags:

dance, Dance, Community, Funding, funding, performance, diversity, Theatre,

engagement, community, collaboration, THEATRE, theatre, devising, Theatre Making,

Cross Pollination, Benefit's, Poverty Artist Development, Voice, Performance,

Collaboration, Engagement, theatre making, Diversity, voice, Devising