What are we about?

We are a newly-formed network of creatives with a strong connection to literature.  Some of us have a portfolio career, some work for the man (or wo-man), one or more may be exploring a serious career or life change and the literature connection is as yet unaffected.  At an initial meeting when we chose to go ahead with the network we all agreed we had ‘wilfulness’ in common.

So our name ‘Found Materials’ has come from a sense that each one of us has many sources that have shaped, informed and made us who we are.  Collectively the range of sources is mind-boggling, and occasionally circuitous to navigate, but always curiously exciting in that we reference it a lot – as an asset.

We could declare that being an organisational mix of micro-business, small creative practice and permanent or freelance roles within large organizations we represent the 21st century arts ecology in England, with all the contingent worries and concerns about funding, cuts, recession, future work to boot.  Yes that is certainly true.  We do epitomise a mixed model that is more pertinent to the ways that projects and work gets done in the creative industries sector – big and small machinations.  But a more prescient truth is that organizations are made up of individuals and even the largest institutions are shaped by an individual spirit.  The we and the I can often conjoin in muddied language so that one person’s stance is clothed in ‘we’ language.  As we recognize the tendency for this in our often frank conversations that occur during our get-togethers we are wise to talking in language that exposes our values, our intention and our personal goals for ourselves and the ones we care about.

The aim for Found Materials has been for us to connect and to ‘think and do’ projects collectively so that our practice and our businesses can be better and more impactful at the end.

So far this has included meeting monthly to share, chat and have access to a sounding board, filming all four of us in conversation at dinner at Sarah’s, a residential in Paris to see new work, venues and practices, mentoring and support from our lead advisor John Kieffer and current plans to develop a series of public and networking events.

Issues and questions which arose at the start of the project which remain pertinent to us include:

• Follow the Leader – what are the effective leadership models we can learn from, adopt and share? How best do we seek models of leadership from a range of sources? how will it affect our existing found materials?
• You say tomato, I say best not in fruit salad – can co-mentoring and peer-to-peer networking be as valuable as being mentored by someone more experienced than you?  And can both practices complement each other?
• Show me the money!  How do we individually and collectively address growth and sustainability for our arts practice and our micro-businesses; within a current creative industries (UK) culture of language about the value of enterprise and entrepreneurialism, where is good practice located?
• How can we connect to individuals and businesses who can support our viable creative ideas? (and where did the patrons go to?)
• I Used to be a Contender!  how different is being an artist to being a practitioner? How to find the balance if you combine both?
• ‘Wellbeing for Dummies’ – how best do we incorporate nurture and well-being practice into our daily work

We view it as beneficial having the time to discuss, think and explore these things, and there is also an impetus in pared-down times to seek to link our existing networks as well as create new ones, in the hope and belief that it will most likely make for greater impact and resonance.